Introduction
It’s often said that the Spirit coming at Pentecost was the birth of the church. I think in many ways it is the beginning of the spread of this Jesus movement outward and around the world.
But the beginning of this movement didn’t just happen out of the blue.
Our reading this morning is about how the Spirit has long been at work in the world, accomplishing what God sets out to do. God’s Spirit confers new authority and identity on this whom it rests. God’s Spirit confounds human wisdom and agendas
God Confers
The verses we’ve had Jan & Jim read for us are part of a larger story unfolding in Numbers 11.
I’ll just sketch it out for us so we can get our bearings.
The Israelites have only recently decamped from Mount Sinai and are on their way to the land of Canaan, which God is leading them to.
But they haven’t gone very far when some among the Israelites start to complain about the menu.
Moses can see the revolt simmering and is thoroughly distressed.
He’s been through one thing after another with the Israelites.
Each time there is a crisis, his role as God’s Prophet is to intercede for the people.
To stand between the people and God and have the discussion with God and with the people.
But this time, Moses says he’s had enough. He wants to quit.
More than that, if things keep going the way they are going, he would rather that God kill him.
This really is quite startling.
Throughout the Jewish scriptures, there is no one quite like Moses.
The Prophet whom all other prophets live in the shadow of.
Here he is weak, ready to give up. Thoroughly broken.
He is beaten.
He appeals to God in very strong motherly terms. He argues that it’s not he, it’s God who has given birth to the people. So it’s God’s responsibility as their mother to nurse them and feed them.
God sees Moses’ situation and has compassion for him. God doesn’t leave him to struggle on alone.
God promises that the menu will change extraordinarily, but that’s not all, the burden of leadership that Moses is bearing, Moses sharing in the work of God, will not just fall on him, but will be shared with 70 of the elders. This will help Moses, but also act as a sign, security, if you will, that God will keep the other promise to feed the people.
So Moses goes and gathers 70 of the Elders and brings them to God’s Tent of Meeting, the Tabernacle, the Mobile Temple where God’s presence dwells on earth.
Where heaven and earth overlap.
God does as promised. A share of the Spirit of God that rests on Moses is placed on the 70 elders, as a result, they prophesy.
This prophesying, led by the Spirit, seems more in common with the experience of Saul, the first King of Israel, who, after Samuel anointed him, spoke ecstatically, rather than the words of later prophets responsible for many of the books of the Jewish scriptures.
But, much like the disciples who spoke in different tongues at Pentecost, this ecstatic speech was an outward sign of another reality.
A sign that a status change had occurred. A status change occurred.
These 70 Elders have been commissioned for a task
Receiving the Spirit and their brief time prophesying was evidence of the authority they had been granted.
That is why the Share of the Spirit was taken from Moses, to show the reason for this empowerment; it was for the same purpose.
Back in February 2020, just before COVID was a thing, remember that? Back then, we were still living in Gore, and I was about to finish my job at the District Council after 13 years and start my theology studies.
But with one week of work to go, I found myself sitting in the Council chambers, turned into the Civil Defence control room.
It was dark, had been pouring with rain all day, and getting worse by the hour. All roads in and out of Gore were impassable. We were completely cut off from the outside world.
Gathered in the room were the district’s police, fire service, ambulance commanders, and Council staff and officials.
A Southland-wide civil defence emergency had been declared. All operations were being run out of Invercargill.
The Regional Civil Defence Controller, based in Invercargill, was on a large speaker phone. We could all hear the conversation.
It became clear that Gore’s situation was particularly precarious.
We all felt paralysed.
But I’ll always remember what happened next.
The Regional Controller in Invercargill spoke clearly and directly to one person in our team who had been earmarked. They said something like: “Under Section so and so of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, I delegate my powers as regional controller to you to respond to the situation. You are now the Local Controller for this emergency in your district..
The change in the room was electric.
Suddenly, things were happening. People were galvanised into action.
Flood workers could acquire whatever equipment they needed to combat the floodwaters.
The police could now evacuate people in danger who wouldn’t leave their flooded homes.
The situation turned around.
Where before there was fear, there was now confidence.
Where we had felt beaten, there was now hope.
The people in Gore now had authority. Not just any authority. It wasn’t just something they made up. It came from the person in charge of the whole operation. It carried the weight and authority of our country’s parliament and courts behind it.
In the same way, the 70 Elders now had the authority to get on with the job and help Moses with his mission. Not just any authority. Divinely conferred.
In the same way, God put his Authority, his empowering Spirit, on the disciples at Pentecost,
The same Spirit that hovered over the waters at the dawn of the creation,
The same Spirit that rested on Moses, that rested on the 70,
The same Spirit that rested on Elijah, that spoke to Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah.
The same Spirit that descended like a dove at the edge of the Jordan and rested on Jesus,
This is the same Spirit … God gives to each of us.
The same Spirit of Jesus.
And so we are given a status change, the authority to carry out the mission of making God’s reign and rule known.
As followers of Christ, we are now envoys of God, carrying with us God’s love, compassion, mercy, and justice into the world.
God does not leave us to struggle on our own. God empowers us with the Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, to love and care for others as God does.
God confounds
But while God confers, there is also something surprising. God also confounds.
There are two Elders named Eldad and Medad, and they had remained in the camp.
The verses here are difficult.
Biblical commentaries are divided here. It’s hard to know if Eldad and Medad were part of the group of 70 Elders and, for some reason, didn’t go out, so only 68 made it to the ten.
Or if they were part of the larger group of Elders, but not part of the group of 70 selected to go to the tent.
But either way. By pouring out God’s Spirit on Eldad and Medad, God does something surprising.
If they were not part of the chosen 70, then it is really surprising that the Spirit rests on them, too. God spoke of 70, not 72.
Or if they were part of the chosen 70, but for some reason couldn’t go out to the tent of meeting to meet with God, It would be surprising for the Israelites that the Spirit rested on them when they were so far away from the action, from Moses and the Tent of Meeting, the Holy Place.
The young man who runs with the news and Joshua, Moses’ right-hand man, are both concerned that something untoward is happening.
Joshua, in particular, is concerned that Eldad and Medad could be attempting to usurp Moses’ God-given authority. This amounts to a challenge to Moses’ leadership.
Often, we think of the Spirit like a Dove. Something quite gentle,
That is a lovely and true metaphor for the Spirit in the way it guides and inspires us.
Maybe that sounds docile, or maybe even safe.
Here in Numbers, as elsewhere in the Old Testament, the word for the Spirit is Ruach, the wind or the very breath of God.
The Spirit is not the church’s pet. It’s not kept inside or in a hutch, to be nurtured and cuddled.
Rather, It blows and goes wherever and whenever it wants. The Spirit drives the Church forward to the fullness of God’s reign and rule in the world.
There is a wildness to the Spirit, an uncontainableness.
It is God after all!
If I can return to my story of the Gore floods for a moment. Once we were getting on with the job, making decisions, organising things, and responding to the situation, it was easy to think that perhaps it was all up to us. Certainly, we had an important part to play.
But everywhere our teams and contractors would show up, there were others showing up to lend a hand, or people had taken care of their neighbours or sandbagging before we got there.
Jesus called us to be the light of the world, asked us to let our light shine before all people. Reminding us that we bring God’s light, the fruit of the Spirit, with us wherever we go.
But sometimes, just sometimes, that can go to our heads. We get so used to this sharing of the Good news of God that we can think… that it is all up to us. That we need to take God around because maybe God needs some help getting there?
When we do this, we forget that Jesus also said, My yoke is easy and my burden is light.
We forget to look for the work of God outside the church, outside the ‘sacred space’,
While God confers, God also confounds this way of thinking. God will not be limited, God keeps on working everywhere.
And if we’re not alive to what God is doing in a particular moment, like perhaps Joshua did, we can look at the work of the Spirit and mistakenly call it a threat.
Everywhere we look, and find evidence of Goodness, compassion, patience, Peacemaking, Generosity, mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, advocacy for justice, and self-giving love. Can we recognise the fruit of the Spirit at work in people and places? Can we recognise the divine fingerprints pointing to where God is working?
We may find these fingerprints in the most unlikely places and people. Places and situations far removed from the Church. Maybe in our workplace, or in a tradesperson who visits to help us with a job.
Can we find the divine fingerprints in our City Councils, in our courts and in our parliament, in our schools, our friendships? In the smile and kindness of a stranger.
Can we see the work of the Spirit in so-called ‘secular’ movements that spring up, opposing injustices against minorities, and the marginalised, the forgotten, and the disposessed?
What if the church joined them? What if whenever we saw the Goodness of God at work, we joined in?
The Church actually does have a history of this. Because the church doesn’t have a monopoly on goodness. God does. God is the source of all these things, and God is at work. In the expected place and in the unexpected place, drawing all to Godself
When we see God at work in big and small ways. May we respond like Moses, who said that he longs for the Day when God’s Spirit would rest on all people.
Closing
Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Spirit came on all God’s people that one Pentecost. God did not leave us to struggle alone. God confers:
The Disciples, strengthened, are driven by the Spirit to take the good news of Jesus where they had never imagined, and so doing, they do bring a little bit of heaven to earth.
So too with us. Jesus has called us and equipped us for his big mission of the reconciliation of all things.
But God also confounds our human-centred thinking. The Spirit of Jesus is making all things new. Going ahead, going before, calling all people all of creation into a made new relationship with the Divine.
In all the places we are, and we are not.
Together, let’s look for the Spirit of God at work in the world, and let’s join in.
Amen